A young Sikh wearing a chola marches in the annual Sikh Day Parade in New York. Behind him is a large semi truck with a US flag strewn across the front and Nishaan Sahibs (the Sikh flag) surrounding it. There is a crowd of Sikhs on either side of the truck, blurred into the background. April 27, 2013. REUTERS/Keith Bedford/Files

Harleen Kaur

A second-year PhD student in Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, Harleen Kaur examines the “becoming” of the Sikh diaspora in the United States, particularly how identity-based violence, nationalism and belonging, and traumatic memory have limited the possibilities for a collective Sikh identity.

Graduating from the University of Michigan in 2015 with a BA in English and a minor in Community Action and Social Change, Harleen uses the power of narrative to transform communities into empowered bodies for change. Drawing inspiration from gurbaani, histories of radical social movements, and critical pedagogy and theory, she spent a year traveling solo through fifteen countries as a Bonderman Fellow to better develop a global framework for liberation and sovereignty.